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Windows Goes Multi-Touch
- Thread starter Mykbibby
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No Steve. 10 million like Apple's model, 289998 people have yours stuffed down their throat and 2 people like it. Thats you and Bill.
Am i the only one that notices whenever Steve Ballmer gets challenged about vista he always compares Microsoft to Apple, but never comments on all the people "downgrading" (i put it in quote because i think its more of an upgrade, you get a performance boost, right?) to XP. He never comments on Apples huge growth recently. Apple are not going to have a dominant market share any time soon, if ever. Yet what % of people complain about OS X? and same for Vista.
It is clear to me who provides the best operating system for the 'average' user.
What the profit or the revenue? Microsoft only had to sell 593000 copies of Office 2008 at $150 each in the first quarter for that to be true, and 2.2 million new Macs were sold so I think its highly likely the profit was entirely down to Mac Office.
People have to physically drive (or order online) to the store and purchase the laptop just like a Mac. No stuffing of throats involved.
Actually, he usually only includes numbers when people ask him about Apple's growth. I mean, he does have to put it in perspective. If you had no knowledge of sales and went only by media coverage, you would think Macs are outselling PCs 10 to 1.
Also, the amount of people downgrading is way overblown. NPD, who tracks software sales, said there is not a significant amount of XP sales, nor a increase of sort that would indicate people are actively downgrading to XP.
You see, when Microsoft releases new software, it does not compete with Apple. They compete with the last version of their product.
cool stuff. problem is, MS now needs to sell hardware makers on it. With Apple(or any software and hardware company) once they have an idea they like, they put it into action.
OMG stop this useless arguing already.
Apple makes what they think is good for them in the long run, so does MS. They are competitors, which makes them try harder.
In the end, its better for customers when there's competition on the market, not 1 company controlling everything.
I say GL to MS, if they make this technology successful it will make Apple bring even better products.
Apple makes what they think is good for them in the long run, so does MS. They are competitors, which makes them try harder.
In the end, its better for customers when there's competition on the market, not 1 company controlling everything.
I say GL to MS, if they make this technology successful it will make Apple bring even better products.
Actually, there are a few things which aren't really quite right:
Dock=not Apple but NeXT (it did come from NeXTSTEP), which is Jobs is Apple
Widgets=not some, but completely Konfabulator which, some may argue, was loosely inspired on Apple's desktop accessories from System 1.0)
Spotlight=instant search first implemented by Apple in iTunes (as far as I can remember, it goes as far as iTunes 4, but it may be even older than that), hard drive indexing from Sherlock (maybe copied from Watson? That's a whole 'nother story, anyway)...
Ok, so your saying that the majority of the divisions revenue/profit was due to a product they didn't even mention in the press release? I have a hard time believing that. What reason do we have to believe anything other than what the press release says?
Either way, last year it was profitable because of Halo 3. When they post their earnings next month, your going to say it was because of GTA. Next quarter, Gears of War 2? Do you see a pattern here? The division is largely profitable because of the Xbox.
They didn't compete very well this time round then did they? XP is hands-down a quicker and more stable OS than Vista.
Xbox didn't make a profit in the last quarter. Microsoft admitted as much recently.
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/137377.asp?source=rss
And lets not forget the project as a whole has sunk $6bn. The chances of them recouping what they have invested on the 360 before having to do all of the R&D again for the next version, is slim. The console market is a tough business.
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/137377.asp?source=rss
And lets not forget the project as a whole has sunk $6bn. The chances of them recouping what they have invested on the 360 before having to do all of the R&D again for the next version, is slim. The console market is a tough business.
Multitouch is cool and all, but I would rather hear comments from Gates and Ballmer such as:
"we are going to make Windows 7 truly intuitive tu use, and give it a uniform look and feel. And in addition we are going to release only one version that everyone can use."
"we will cut the loading time by 30 seconds and increase security"
"we will make the OS more accessible to the general people that do not know how to configure periferals and network settings etc"
All a little too late though. Jobs did this with Apple eons ago. I switched frustrated from Vista 5 months ago and couldn't be happier. I don't think I will go back, if the above things don't happen.
"we are going to make Windows 7 truly intuitive tu use, and give it a uniform look and feel. And in addition we are going to release only one version that everyone can use."
"we will cut the loading time by 30 seconds and increase security"
"we will make the OS more accessible to the general people that do not know how to configure periferals and network settings etc"
All a little too late though. Jobs did this with Apple eons ago. I switched frustrated from Vista 5 months ago and couldn't be happier. I don't think I will go back, if the above things don't happen.
In some regards, not very well at all. However, Vista is more secure than XP, has some nice features and is showing progress. We only need look at XP when it first came out...
Leave it to M$ to take great technology and make it buggy, clumsy, and underwhelming. They really managed to suck the magic right out of it. Wake me up when you have something elegant and useful to show, instead of a few useless demo hacks.
However, competition is good and it should nonetheless spur Apple to make sure they put the technology to its best use.
However, competition is good and it should nonetheless spur Apple to make sure they put the technology to its best use.
This wasn't a big event. Just a "small peak" at Windows 7 and some uniform Microsoft vs Apple interview questions. Windows 7 is still 18 months off.
Although, I sure hope the above things will happen.
I read the article, where did they say the Xbox division didn't make a profit? It stated the $89 million in operating profit... Just no comment on whether the Xbox was still sold at an initial loss.
Yeah, the market is tough. However, I think the $6 billion was well worth it. They dearly needed a "consumer" product, and now they have made a new name for themselves and potentially new source of income for them. They came in at the right time, introduced the 1st hard drive enabled console, made online gaming big, and is now #2 in console sales. I mean, who really would have believed Microsoft would be outselling the playstation?
Because they don't want to admit the Xbox is failing or how much they are raking in from Apple's booming Mac sales.
Because the press-release is marketing speak.
Which is made by Microsoft so they get *all* the money from it, that's an exception.
If they make a small (<$75 million) profit next quarter it'll be down to Mac Office continuing to sell well. If they make a large profit it'll be down to the Xbox.
If I were living in "Second Life", that would make sense, but
in real world, I would choose to see real photos in my real album
with real feeling, listening to the music being played on turntable or
CD player. Going all digital does seem erase the real world, I mean
tangible & physical world.
in real world, I would choose to see real photos in my real album
with real feeling, listening to the music being played on turntable or
CD player. Going all digital does seem erase the real world, I mean
tangible & physical world.
On the debate about the usefulness of multi-touch, I think good arguments are being made on both sides.
I definitely see multi-touch changing the way we interact with computers. Anyone who watches the demos of Microsoft Surface has to admit that the technology is not only extremely cool, but extremely useful in a variety of contexts.
However, I agree that multi-touch on the laptop as shown in the Windows 7 demo is kind of silly. Not only will your arms get tired, but the impact of your fingers against the screen will cause the laptop screen to bob around on its hinges. And when the person in the demo uses two hands on that little laptop screen, it looks pretty cramped and awkward.
I think multi-touch would be great in a tablet form, where you can look down at the screen, or look at it at an angle.
I can also imagine a time when desktops are multi-touch. As others have pointed out, the screen will not be perpindicular. I imagine the screen being like a canvas, propped up at about a 30 degree angle. If you needed to type, you could pull up a virtual keyboard. And that's assuming voice recognition hasn't made typing obsolete.
As for the argument that virtual keyboards do not provide enough tactile feedback -- I think this notion is just based on the fact that we are accustomed to clunky physical keyboards. If we were raised on virtual keyboards like in Star Trek, we wouldn't miss the tactile feedback (or haptic response would be all we needed).
Besides, a virtual keyboard would be a lot smarter than the inanimate objects that we currently do our typing on. A virtual keyboard would fit itself to our hand sizes and ergonomic preferences. It would be smart enough to predict the keys we are trying to stroke if we give an ambiguous input.
I can see multi-touch being useful in all of these areas -- particularly things like graphic design, CAD, and video editing. These things are inherently visual and lend themselves to graphic modeling and direct manipulation of objects.
Also, I think we need to assume that voice recognition will also be an integral part of future interfaces (I suspect a lot of web browsing will be done by voice commands).
As far as sales -- have you watched the videos for the Microsoft Surface? You know, I always thought the first widely-used multi-touch applications would be silly paint programs or something, but it turns out Microsoft is putting multi-touch to work in a really impressive way in business environments. There is a cool video on YouTube where a guy is using Surface to customize different snowboards at a hypothetical snowboard store.
I imagine multi-touch would work with web browsing in a similar way. You could go to Amazon and browse though books like a library. If you find books that interest you, you physically move them aside and put them on a stack instead of clicking on "Add to Wishlist" and waiting for another webpage to load and then having to click your way back to where you were before.
I also think multi-touch has interesting applications in science and math vis-a-vis how we visualize and manipulate data.
I definitely see multi-touch changing the way we interact with computers. Anyone who watches the demos of Microsoft Surface has to admit that the technology is not only extremely cool, but extremely useful in a variety of contexts.
However, I agree that multi-touch on the laptop as shown in the Windows 7 demo is kind of silly. Not only will your arms get tired, but the impact of your fingers against the screen will cause the laptop screen to bob around on its hinges. And when the person in the demo uses two hands on that little laptop screen, it looks pretty cramped and awkward.
I think multi-touch would be great in a tablet form, where you can look down at the screen, or look at it at an angle.
I can also imagine a time when desktops are multi-touch. As others have pointed out, the screen will not be perpindicular. I imagine the screen being like a canvas, propped up at about a 30 degree angle. If you needed to type, you could pull up a virtual keyboard. And that's assuming voice recognition hasn't made typing obsolete.
As for the argument that virtual keyboards do not provide enough tactile feedback -- I think this notion is just based on the fact that we are accustomed to clunky physical keyboards. If we were raised on virtual keyboards like in Star Trek, we wouldn't miss the tactile feedback (or haptic response would be all we needed).
Besides, a virtual keyboard would be a lot smarter than the inanimate objects that we currently do our typing on. A virtual keyboard would fit itself to our hand sizes and ergonomic preferences. It would be smart enough to predict the keys we are trying to stroke if we give an ambiguous input.
I can see multi-touch being useful in all of these areas -- particularly things like graphic design, CAD, and video editing. These things are inherently visual and lend themselves to graphic modeling and direct manipulation of objects.
Also, I think we need to assume that voice recognition will also be an integral part of future interfaces (I suspect a lot of web browsing will be done by voice commands).
As far as sales -- have you watched the videos for the Microsoft Surface? You know, I always thought the first widely-used multi-touch applications would be silly paint programs or something, but it turns out Microsoft is putting multi-touch to work in a really impressive way in business environments. There is a cool video on YouTube where a guy is using Surface to customize different snowboards at a hypothetical snowboard store.
I imagine multi-touch would work with web browsing in a similar way. You could go to Amazon and browse though books like a library. If you find books that interest you, you physically move them aside and put them on a stack instead of clicking on "Add to Wishlist" and waiting for another webpage to load and then having to click your way back to where you were before.
I also think multi-touch has interesting applications in science and math vis-a-vis how we visualize and manipulate data.
Maybe the only thing going for Vista is that it can't get any worse at least until SP2...
Vista is more secure than XP --ComputerWorld
Vista More Secure than XP --TgDaily
Its really up in the air at this point.
SO where's the beef?
I hope Windows 7 doesn't include the best of 2008 technology and multitouch in 2010.
I actually want Windows 7 to be a kick @$$ OS so I could possibly own some PCs along with the Mac that are strung across my office.
I hope Windows 7 doesn't include the best of 2008 technology and multitouch in 2010.
I actually want Windows 7 to be a kick @$$ OS so I could possibly own some PCs along with the Mac that are strung across my office.
Overall for the generation yes.
They aren't currently outselling the Playstation worldwide. They are a few hundred units ahead in the US and are behind in all other markets.
I like how everything Microsoft has seems to involve Apple in some way. There is simply no reason to believe Mac 2008 was the dominating source of income for the division, when it is not even mentioned in the press release. They did, however, contribute the success to the Xbox 360. Who are we to say they are wrong? We could go on and on about this, but Microsoft contributes the success to the Xbox 360, and we know nothing more.
Overall, the Xbox has sold some 19 million, with the PS3 at 12.6 million, which was what I was referring to.Eraserhead said:
*WRONG* Apple did not steal from Xerox
Your awareness is incorrect, Apple licensed the technology from xerox parc. Which wasn't very developed anyway, there were no drop down menus for example. Most of what we nowadays think of as the Graphical User Interface was invented by Apple
Your awareness is incorrect, Apple licensed the technology from xerox parc. Which wasn't very developed anyway, there were no drop down menus for example. Most of what we nowadays think of as the Graphical User Interface was invented by Apple